Thursday, May 30, 2013

Part 91 - The Red Moose Inn

Section L – Donner
Summit to Sierra City – distance thirty-nine miles, was the shortest section
along the PCT. A determined hiker could go the distance in one day, but
most allocate two days for the journey. My goal for today was twenty
miles, with anticipation of pulling into Sierra City sometime late tomorrow
afternoon. From Donner Summit the trail climbed to Castle Pass, and
shortly thereafter passed the Peter Grubb Hut, located in Round Valley, a cabin
built by the Sierra Club in 1938 for public use.

It was built by friends
and family of Peter, who was an avid Sierra Club member and who had just
graduated from Galileo High School in San Francisco, California. He was
on a bicycle tour in Italy with a friend, Bill Burd, when he died at age eighteen.

Crest ridges, steep
volcanic gullies, slippery squishy clay, marshy meadows, and hordes of
mosquitoes dominate the trail leading to Jackson Meadows Reservoir. I was
able to hike twenty-two miles today and made camp in a grove of mountain
hemlocks.

The trail passed close
to Jackson Meadows Reservoir and it was tempting to take a few moments and swim
in the warm waters, but I didn’t. I still had seventeen miles to travel
today to get to Highway 49 and then walk or hitch a ride into Sierra City.
The pain in my back muscles is now almost unbearable. I had to stop
often to shift the weight of the pack in an effort to find even a modicum of
relief, and whatever respite I found was only temporary; nevertheless, I kept
shifting the weight and moved on.

My daughter, Allison, is a nurse in
Utah; using my cell phone, I put a call through to her and asked if there was
any over-the-counter pain medication stronger than Aleve or Ibuprofen that I
could purchase. She said there wasn’t, so I resigned myself to living
with the pain.

From the reservoir, it
was all downhill to the highway and a bridge that crossed over the North Yuba
River. Just before the bridge crossing, I saw another hiker cross the
bridge, then pass to the other side of Highway 49, where he positioned himself
to hitch a ride into Sierra City. I joined him beside the edge of the
road; it was Fun Size, the happy-go-lucky hiker from Portland, Oregon, who has
a girlfriend that he misses dearly.

Traffic was sparse and
after fifteen minutes of waiting, I elected to begin walking the mile and a
half into town. I told Fun Size that if he scored a ride, maybe he would
be willing to ask the driver to stop and pick me up also. Two hundred yards
down the road, a car passed me going in the opposite direction. It stopped,
turned around, and pulled up alongside of me. The young lady driver asked
if she could give me a ride into town. I readily accepted.

From
where Fun Size was standing beside the road, he could see that I had snagged a
ride. I asked the young lady that inasmuch as she was willing to give me
a ride, would she also be willing to turn around and drive the short distance
to where Fun Size was standing, and give him a ride also. She readily
agreed, and in minutes, both Fun Size and I were on our way to Sierra City.
The driver’s name was Ziggy and she said she had hiked the trail last
year and was just paying forward all the kindness she had received on the
trail.

Ziggy stopped in front
of the Red Moose Inn and the two of us got out of the car. We thanked her
profusely for her kindness and generosity, and stepped onto the wooden porch
adjacent to the entrance of the inn. There were half a dozen hikers
sitting in chairs on the porch, eating food or sorting through their resupply
boxes.

The Red Moose Inn was a
combination restaurant/motel that catered to the hiking crowd. Several
years ago, the owners elected to begin receiving hiker resupply packages, as
well as allowing the hikers to camp on the lawn in their backyard. They
also had restrooms and showers for use, as well as outlets for charging
electronic devices, and a computer with Internet connection for checking
e-mails and uploading trail journals and images. I retrieved the resupply
box that I left here several days ago, and returned to the wooden porch to sort
through it. I located an empty table and lay my supplies on top of it.

While sorting through my
box, I prepared a packet of Idahoan Instant Potatoes and had that as my evening
meal, along with cookies and a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Even
though there was a restaurant just a few feet away where I could have ordered a
tasty meal, I didn’t want to spend the money.

I discovered long ago that
I don’t live to eat; rather, I eat to live and quality of food is not that
important to me. At home, when my wife asks me what I’d like to have for
dinner, I remind her that anything above a peanut butter and jam sandwich is
fine with me. Kellogg’s Raisin Bran is great for breakfast, and if I had to
subsist on Top Ramen and Idahoan Instant Potatoes for dinner, I wouldn’t be put
out. My wife likes to remind me that I’m a cheap date.

The Peter Grubb cabin. It's just off the trail, not hard to find. The ladder to the door shows how high the snow can get during the winter months.